Peter Joyce

from Galway, Ireland

lives in Vienna Austria

University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Accademia Musicale Chigiana

Peter Joyce is an Irish musician, conductor and composer whose musical identity has been strongly developed by his early experiences with jazz, music theory, his vigorous training in Viennese Classicism and Modernism and his ongoing passion for contemporary music and experimental as well as traditional musical theatre. His artistic identity is as much influenced by the landscapes and great modernist literature of his native country as it is by the psychoanalytic and musical innovations of his adopted home Vienna.

Winner of the 1st Prize and Orchestra Prize of the 2023 Irish National “Feis Ceoil” Conducting Competition, Peter Joyce has worked in symphonic, musical theatre, opera and choral settings including his debut in the Golden Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein with the Akademische Philharmonie Vienna. Recently he has performed again in the Musikverein with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra and in the Vienna Konzerthaus with the Wiener Symphoniker. Other highlights include performing and working with the Sofia National Philharmonic, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Szolnok Symphony Orchestra. Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic, Pro-Arte Orchestra Vienna, Orchestra of the Technical University Vienna, Max Brand Ensemble, Ensemble Ars Nova, the Webern Ensemble and the Webern Chamber Choir, and with the ORF as a musical assistant for live broadcasts from the Vienna State Opera. In May 2024 Peter made his opera debut conducting ‘Radames’ Peter Eötvös at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and returned there in June 2025 to conduct the Austrian premiere of Ethel Smyth’s opera The Boatswain’s Mate. Peter is currently assistant conductor and studio member with the Irish National Opera.

Peter is the founder and conductor of the Esker Festival Orchestra, Ireland's longest established, and one of Europe's most exciting orchestras for emerging young professional musicians with whom he celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2023 with lauded performances of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony.

A champion of new music, Peter has performed and conducted premieres of many new works by Irish and international composers. As a composer Peter's own works have been performed throughout Europe by groups such as the Arditti Quartet, Quartetto Prometeo, the Kandinsky Quartet, the Webern Ensemble, Platypus Ensemble and at festivals such as Wien Modern. In 2020 he was the winner of the Feis Ceoil IMRO Composition Award and was finalist in the 2025 International Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition.

He is a music graduate of Trinity College Dublin where he began composing, arranging and conducting, later studying conducting with Dr. Geoffrey Spratt. Peter continued his musical education by studying conducting with Mark Stringer and composition with Detlev Müller-Siemens at the renowned University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna from where he graduated with honours in June 2024. His musical education has been furthered through masterclasses with Peter Eötvös, Marin Alsop, Sian Edwards, Salvatore Sciarrino and Stefano Gervasoni and many others.